We spoke and Canon listened! No more need to compromise with inferior workarounds, this firmware update makes the 5dmkii perform like a video camera that also takes ridiculously awesome stills. Does this added firmware, with the implication of more to come down the road (24p anyone?), effectively trump the release of Red’s Scarlet? With the 5dmkii’s 1080p and a full frame 24mm x 36mm sensor, all Scarlet has on the it is 3k image capture, 24p, over and under-cranking… ok maybe that comment is more provocative than plausible. But with the tag line An epic begins with M I do believe Canon has flipped the flame switch to on.

For my new freelance business (have I mentioned I went freelance?) the 5dmkii could totally be the defacto webisode camera of choice. Knowing that one should always produce with broadcast hd standards in mind, 30p is a great source frame rate for video destined for the web and can be easily dropped into a 29.97 time line and printed to HDCAM SR, IMX, DigiBeta or what have you. All that with a little bit of ye olde ProRes transcode and Color grading, of course.

LATimes.com, WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com; take a page out of the Tyler Ginter combat photographer’s handbook and put these puppies in the field. The 5dmkii very well could become the video journalist’s weapon of choice. Great stills, great video, and with a little bit of help solid sound. Check out Tyler’s demo of the 5dmkii combined with a Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 wireless lavalier mic:

Just browsing through the videos the cinema5d.com community is posting and… wow! Lots of good stuff, here’s a few by Dan Chung that caught my eye…

Dan Chung’s Forgotten Shanghai: The Longchang Apartments reminds me of Slumdog Millionaire. Look at the access Dan gets to this apartment building. And while I have no idea what is being said here, the 30 progressive frames per second articulate tomes.

Good to see the how the 5dmarkii performs in over the shoulder, portrait, and panoramic situations.

All natural light here and the imagery is so dusty you can taste the steaming noodles. Read the cinema5d.com forum thread here.

Dan Chung’s Anne Enright in Uganda… From Chung’s Vimeo description, this video was …a run and gun video shot entirely on a Canon Eos5DmkII with a Nikon 17-35 f2.8, 80-200 f2.8 and Contax/Zeiss 85mm f1.4.

Dan’s taking this camera off the shelf and out into the world where it can shine light on issues that need to be seen and heard. The intrinsically high production quality imagery the 5dmarkii is producing can only further justify what an invaluable tool this camera is when placed in the right hands. What’s most amazing to me is the intimacy Chung is capturing in his subjects whilst running and gunning.

Cinema5d.com forum member FreakIndeed may say it best:

I think Dan Chung is creating the best work with this camera to date. Canon should be jumping on this guy and trying to get him to let them use his stuff for promotional purposes. Of course the only problem with that would be, Dan is using Nikon lenses!

And have I mentioned what a joy it is to pull screen grabs from a 30p source? These are all shift-cmd-4 from the web compression folks! Read the rest of the forum thread here.

Thirdly, I really like Dan’s …first attempt at a proper TV style news video shot entirely on an Eos5DmkII and Nikon lenses.

If all news only looked this good! Something about the filmic black crush of the 5dmarkii that takes what typical ENG Digibeta would capture and turns it into docu-gold.

And the prime lens fixed focal length just sucks me in to the walk and talk conversation with a man on the street.

Old news conventions in new, fresh, filmic light indeed!

Thank you Dan Chung for putting this work out there for others to see and learn from. It’s great to see a shooter take a cutting edge camera by the ears and steer it right out into the dirt and grime only to bring back some of the best internet documentary film making your humble narrator has seen in some time. 60 Minutes, eat your heart out.

Inaugural chaos here in the northwest DC suburbs followed by a helluva cold have kept me out of the blog game for a hot minute. But while I’ve been defragging, so to speak, I did a bit of looking around at the various communities forming out there focused on making films with the Canon 5D Mark II and other DSLR cameras shooting video.

DVinfo.net has created a new subforum: Canon EOS 5D Mark II for HD. I’ve found this to be a very cool forum where video guys are looking at a still camera. Got a question about steadicams, xlr adapters, or anything else a DoP might know post it here.

Oppositely, over at dpreview.com the still photography guys (and girls I’m sure, sorry ladies) are looking at the video capabilities as a whole new world opening before them. If you’ve got a question about lenses, flashes, or anything else still-photog-centric, this is the place to ask.

If you’ve got another great DSLR cinematography resource post a comment and share! I leave you with a little bit of 5dmarkii holy-moly compliments of renowned wild bird photographer Romy Ocon

Thanks to Tristan Tom for posting a comment here. Through Tristan’s blog I found a link to the above video produced by Tyler Ginter.

Tyler’s got a kick ass blog himself and is starting to get some good attention from the folks over at FreshDV. Bonusly, my Dad got stationed at Fort Meade way back in the day, which lead to him meeting my Mom at some officer’s ball, which lead to me, which lead to this blog, which resulted in the moment you find yourself in right now. Sort of. Well, how ’bout that.

Anywho, Tyler’s stuff is definitely worth checking out. And you can see the hd version of his tutorial right here.

It’s so awesome to see different ways time lapse photography is being integrated into HD video. How cool is the internet, giving us access to great sites like Vimeo and YouTube that host this stuff. For free. In HD.

And I didn’t post this HD time lapse last time so, in the spirit of saving the best of the best for a follow up blog post, check this out.

Happy New Year! Think the Canon 5D Mark II isn’t top of mind over at Apple?

Think again. Topping the list of the new RAW compatibility update, the 5D Mark II is poised to start the new year off right… with a DSLR filmmaking revolution! And check out this new camera shootout from Zacuto, first seen (by me at least) over at the DCFCPUG website.

And if your mind is made up and you’re ready to pony up the bills for a 5dmarkii, check out the other DSLR cinematography stuff you might want to include in that order.